The Attending Truth: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Don’t talk so foolish,” Mrs Jones told him angrily.

  “Well, no, I don’t,” Bobby answered. “It wouldn’t stop the hunt, only make it a hundred times hotter. Instead of one solitary C.I.D. man struggling along on his lonesome, you would have half Scotland Yard here and all the crime reporters in the country.”

  “Out of the frying-pan into the fire?” Jones commented. “Yes, I can see that. All the same, when a man gets so he feels he can’t stand it any longer, sort of anything might happen, don’t you think?”

  “What’ll happen to you,” Mrs Jones told him still more angrily, “is no dinner if you go on jabbering rubbish.”

  She went back into the shop. Jones, with an apologetic, deprecatory glance at Bobby, followed. Bobby himself went on to the village police-station, where such succulent pork chops were awaiting him as he had not known since the dim days of the long-dead past.

  Later on, well content interiorly, but less so with the progress of the investigation, Bobby was busy with the paper work that must accompany, even though at the same time it hinders, every investigation, when Sergeant Stubbs made his appearance.

  “It’s that Weary Willie back again,” he said. “Being impudent, as per usual. Told me to say if Mr Owen would like a chat, Mr Walker—Mister, if you please—would be waiting up along the church.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby said. “Seats there, aren’t there? I expect he dislikes the insides of police-stations. I’ll push along presently, in case he really has something to tell us. Goodness knows, we need it badly enough.” Stubbs looked disapproval, but said nothing, though strongly of opinion that what the tramp said wasn’t evidence. Ignoring this silent criticism, of which, however, he was well aware, Bobby glanced at his watch and continued: “You might ring up the Holcombe place, will you? Ask if Mrs Holcombe is back yet and if Mr Harry Holcombe is still there. Oh, and ask how Miss Holcombe is?”

  Stubbs went off accordingly to the ’phone in the outer room. Bobby returned to the wholly inconclusive report he was reading. Stubbs came back and said:

  “They say they haven’t been able to get in touch with Mrs Holcombe yet. She’s out somewhere. Business. Young Holcombe has gone back to the office. He can be got there, most likely, if wanted. Miss Holcombe is asleep. The doctor left orders she wasn’t to be disturbed on any account.”

  “Hope that doesn’t mean she intends to go sick on us,” Bobby remarked. “She’s got quite a bit of explaining to do, and if she doesn’t want, going sick is a strong card to play.”

  “We can ask for a medical,” Stubbs said.

  “Yes, but it means delay,” Bobby said, “and I don’t like delay in a case like this, when almost anything may happen next. Things seem to be shaping in a way I don’t like at all. Some panic and get desperate if they begin to feel we are drawing near.”

  He took his hat then, borrowed a bicycle to save time, since there were still plenty of reports to read and consider, and set out. In the churchyard, Walker—Bobby had been more than a little doubtful of finding him there—was sitting placidly on one of the benches, smoking a pipe so foul that its odour carried even to the road. As Bobby approached, he put it away with the remark that it was smoked out long ago. So Bobby accepted the hint, produced cigarettes, gave Walker one and lighted another for himself. For some moments they smoked in silence, side by side. Then Bobby got to his feet.

  “Well, I’ll be getting on,” he said, and Walker looked considerably startled.

  “I ain’t said nothing yet,” he protested.

  “Probably because you’ve got nothing to say,” Bobby retorted. “I’ve no time to waste on you. Next time, talk to Sergeant Stubbs.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Walker exclaimed, as Bobby began to move away. “I don’t like that sergeant bloke of yours. Has a sort of ‘pinch-you-as-soon-as-look-at-you’ air about him. I’m only thinking how to begin and what it would be worth if I told you there was a cove that night dodging out from the copse, looking like I never seen, white as a ruddy ghost, and running like hell from I don’t know what and me not wanting to look and see, in case of being scared the same way like. So I run too.”

  “Who was it?” Bobby asked.

  “We’ll come to that in a while,” Walker said. “Got another cigarette?”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  “SORT O’ BROKE ME UP”

  THOUGHTFULLY BOBBY produced the required cigarette and handed it over. Walker’s last words had been spoken with a sudden, quick intensity that had impressed him; indeed, startled him. They had created in his mind a vivid picture of one fleeing in fearful panic—from what?—in a panic that had so communicated itself to the solitary onlooker that he, too, had fled, though he knew not why. He saw that Walker was watching him uneasily. It was almost as if more had come out than he had at first intended and now he was becoming afraid of the consequences. Bobby said:

  “I think we had better start from the beginning. It will be easier to get it straight. What were you doing in the copse the night you were impudent to Miss Holcombe?”

  “You said as that was washed out,” Walker protested indignantly.

  “So it is,” Bobby assured him. “Officially we’ve forgotten it. For that matter, no complaint was ever made, so officially we don’t know anything about it. But it would help if you said what you were doing there. I’ve got to test what you say, to be sure it’s O.K.”

  “Well, that there copse,” Walker said then, “is a part of my regular round. Handy to where I doss regular, when that way, and generally good for a touch as well, if you see a young ’un coming along with his girl. He don’t want a fuss with her looking on, and he’s most always ready to turn up a bob or a tanner to get rid of you and no interruption, not to mention both him and her being dandied up like. I call it my sixpenny money-box.”

  “Ever get a few kicks instead of the expected ha’pence?” inquired Bobby.

  “You’ve got to be careful who you pick on,” Walker admitted. “First thing you learn soon as you’ve took to the road professional like.”

  “What did you mean by saying it was near where you doss regularly?” Bobby asked.

  “You would be surprised,” Walker told him, “if you knew how many places a cove gets to know where he can doss down all comfy like, warm and dry, all free and gratis and for nothing. Hay-lofts, outhouses, stables, empty houses, though there’s not many of them now. One way or another, it’s not so often a bloke’s got to doss hard. One bloke used regular an attic in a house what two old people lived in, and they never knew for long enough. Climbed in by the outhouse roof, he did, put a wedge under the door to prevent being disturbed if the old ’uns forgot their manners, snuggled down, and watched his chance to slip off next morning. Didn’t last, though. They took a lodger without letting him know, and he thought he was in luck when he saw there was a bed put in. Only there was a young lady in it as woke up, and he used to say he could still hear her screaming after he had run a mile. Worst fright he ever had in his life.”

  “Where do you go hereabouts?” Bobby asked. “Castle Manor?”

  “That’s right,” Walker admitted, though with considerable reluctance. “Them big places is always good for outhouses and such. Climb the wall, make friends with the dogs—easy in them houses. They’re most always too fat to be nasty—the burglar’s best friends, they are, making the family feel safe when they ain’t. Then you look round for a potting-shed with plenty of sacks. That’s your bone idea.”

  “Bone idea?” Bobby interrupted, puzzled for the moment. “Oh, I see—beau ideal. Go on.”

  “Well, that’s what I said, isn’t it?” Walker asked, slightly offended. “At Mrs Holcombe’s, there’s where the young lady has for her hobby like, and the rummiest things as you never saw all over it. But you don’t have to bother putting it all straight after use, because it ain’t ever and nothing like. She don’t keep early hours, though, same as you have to on the road. I’ve dropped off before now waiting for her to go, and only woke when
it rained and me that wet, shelter didn’t hardly matter any more.”

  “You know you can get sent up for that?” Bobby asked. “Found on enclosed premises for a presumed unlawful purpose.”

  “All professions has their risks,” Walker pointed out. “But it ain’t that. No housebreaking tools on me. Innocent as the babe unborn. Trespassing, that’s all, and me only too willing to go if told. I’m honest, I am; get my own living, don’t do no harm, and no one can say different. But there’s some as thinks they can treat us blokes any way they like, and some as police ought to keep an eye on instead of us, what don’t do no harm to no one.” He paused and reflected on what seemed unpleasant memories. “What about there being some hereabouts as would set a dog on you and worse, same as you might be tore in pieces, and never think twice about it. If it’s a nob as does it, that all right with you blokes?”

  “Hardly that,” Bobby said, and he thought at once of Colonel Yeo-Young and his big but well-trained Alsatian. “It most certainly wouldn’t be all right if any serious damage resulted.”

  “Lives in a dinky little sort of cottage,” Walker went on, “same as where ladies live on their lonesome, and generally good for a touch, bless their kind hearts, and if all you ask is a glass of water, almost sure of a hand out as well, but some as is all vinegar, and sorter reach for a broom instead. But there wasn’t no lady at this crib; proper tidy like as it was, and I hadn’t hardly knocked when a great dog like a pony came galloping up and kept me there so I didn’t dare so much as lift a finger. Quiet as a lamb if I didn’t move, but stir an inch and there it was, snarling and showing its teeth. Hours I had to stand like a ruddy statue, not daring to move a finger-tip, for fear of being torn to bits.”

  “All right really,” Bobby said. “You may be sure the dog’s master was watching, ready to call it off any moment.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Walker said doubtfully. “Fit to drop I was. When he did show, he let on to be awful sorry and surprised, and said as how when he wasn’t there he always left his dog on guard. I didn’t say nothing, but got away fast as I could, and I hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when there was that great brute after me again, snarling and bristling something awful if I tried to go on, but like a lamb if I didn’t. Brought me back to the bungalow like it was a game and me the stick being thrown for it to fetch.”

  “Its master was having what he would have called fun, I’m afraid,” Bobby said, and once again he thought of Colonel Yeo-Young.

  “Grinning all over his face he was when I got back,” Walker went on, “and said how he just wanted to tell me not to call there again because of his dog having such a good memory. So I said respectful like as I wasn’t feeling I ever would and thank you, sir, and I hadn’t hardly gone more than about the same down the road when that dog was after me again, and back I had to go, with it wagging its tail if I did, but snarling and showing its teeth if I didn’t. The gent was waiting same as before, grinning more like a heathen Chinese idol than ever. So I said how long was he going to keep that game up, and he laughed and laughed fit to split, and gave me a bob and said mind never come that way again, and I won’t neither.”

  “Not a nice story,” Bobby said; “but nothing we can take hold of.”

  “It sort of broke me up,” Walker went on, speaking now half to himself. “I spent that bob of his on beer first pub I came to, and a nasty taste it left in my mouth, and beer’s never been the same since. Time was when I would have waited till him and that great brute of his were out of the way, and when they got back there would have been half a brick chucked through every window. Or might be a nice little fire burning against the back door. Arson that would have been, though, and the other only malicious damage.”

  “Know quite a lot about the law, don’t you?” Bobby remarked, amused again.

  “If you take up the road serious like,” Walker told him earnestly, “there’s a lot you have to know—a surprising lot. Same as any job. But I never did a thing. Lost heart, I had. It was knowing I wasn’t any more the man I had been, and trying to get back, in a manner of speaking, that made me say what I did to the young lady, but meaning nothing bad. Swank it was. Swank.”

  He was silent then, and so was Bobby. He had been oddly moved by the story he had listened to. He felt that in some obscure way it was being treated like a thing, not like a man, in this game of Colonel Yeo-Young’s that had so deeply wounded the sense of human dignity that this battered, elderly vagabond had yet somehow managed still to preserve somewhere about him. Walker broke the silence first. He was saying:

  “I never spoke a word about it till now, and I wouldn’t, only for you saying ‘Mister’ to me, same as I was anybody else.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby said, very surprised, for indeed he had entirely forgotten that he had spoken so.

  “Gotten it off my chest,” Walker said, quite briskly. “I reckon maybe I had to, anyway. Tell you it all, I mean. Or if it had come out about me and him, twisted it they would have to make it seem I was telling lies about what I saw, so as to get even.”

  “What was it you saw?” Bobby asked.

  “I never meant to be back again in these parts,” Walker went on; “but somehow it seemed I had to. Every blasted road seemed to bring me back, even when I didn’t want, and there I was, and hard-up as well. Lost my touch, I had. No force, no conviction in it when I told the tale. Never been no one on the road better than me at it, but not no more. So I didn’t turn back, me being near the copse like, as was most often good for a tanner or two, and a warm, dry doss handy in the young lady’s workshop. But just as I got to the copse where it begins, I heard some one behind, and when he started calling ‘Pompey’, I knew who it was all right, and I wasn’t long shinning up a tree.”

  “Yes?” Bobby said when Walker paused. “Did he see you?”

  “No, went by in a hurry like,” Walker said, “and I was thinking of climbing down when next thing I heard was the howling of the dog. It was—I dunno, shivery like. As near as nothing falling off the tree I was, and so I would, only for hanging on tight. Next thing, there was him and his dog, and both of ’em running like all hell was behind.”

  “I think perhaps it was,” Bobby said. Then he asked: “You’ve said nothing about all this to any one else?”

  “Not me,” Walker said, “and I wasn’t meaning to, me knowing if it came out about me and the dog, it would all be put down to spite and trying to get even. Only I heard about me being asked to come forward, and I reckoned as I would, though cautious like. So there it is; but, after all, what did I see? Only a man running. What did I hear? Only a dog howling.”

  “I know,” Bobby said. “All the same, it’s a lead. It may work in.”

  “I’ve never give you the bloke’s name,” Walker said.

  “There’s no need,” Bobby answered. “I know.” He produced his wallet and a ten-shilling note, which he gave to Walker. “That’ll do for bed and breakfast,” he said. “I want you to take the ’bus to Felstead and next morning go round to the police-station. They’ll be expecting you. I’m ringing them up, and I’ll arrange for you to have twelve and six a day for the present. You’ll be found odd jobs, to earn your money and keep you out of mischief, and out of the pubs.”

  “Lummy,” Walker said, looking rather doubtfully at the ten-shilling note. “What’s the game? Going to turn me into a cop?”

  “Well, not exactly,” Bobby reassured him. “But I want to keep in touch with you. I may need your help. At present, what you say, standing by itself, doesn’t amount to much. It may mean a lot presently.”

  “It’ll look funny like,” Walker protested, still uneasy. “I mean to say, me being in with the cops. Get me a bad name with the other blokes on the road.”

  “Why go back to the road?” Bobby asked. “Must be a bit dull and a bit tiring, tramping miles all day and every day. I expect I could get you a job at a works, if you like. Full employment, you know. A sit-down job. A change from everlasting walking. Nigh
t watchman. Coke brasier provided you can cook a bloater on or boil a kettle for tea or cocoa. There’s a siding runs near the factory, and they are afraid of sparks from the engine. That’s chiefly what you would have to look out for. Fire. Four pound ten a week. Think it over—and give your poor feet a rest.”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  “THE RIGHT QUESTIONS”

  LEAVING A very thoughtful and surprised Walker to go on to the nearest ’bus stop, Bobby cycled back to the police-station. As on the way he passed the Good Grocery Stores, Jones himself came again to the door, this time apparently bowing out deferentially so important a local personality as Colonel Yeo-Young, who was, as usual, accompanied by his huge Alsatian dog. The sight of the colonel did not greatly please Bobby, who was inclined to wonder if his appearance in the village was pure coincidence, or if he had heard of Walker’s presence there and had grown uneasy.

  Not that that seemed very likely. According to the story to which Bobby had just listened, Yeo-Young had had no knowledge of, and no reason to suspect, that any one, either Walker or another, had been aware of his visit to the copse on the night of the murder, or of his hurried departure. Yet he was certainly very capable of drawing the correct conclusions if he knew—as he very likely did, or soon would—that Bobby had been talking to Walker, and if subsequently he was questioned about his movements on that night.

  Such thoughts passed rapidly through Bobby’s mind as he waved a response to Jones’s usual beaming, friendly salutation, and in reply to Yeo-Young’s curt nod produced his most amiable smile, so continuing to the police-station. There Sergeant Stubbs was waiting.